The challenge of Chinese communist historiography

By Paul Monk

It is widely understood that the Chinese Communist Party exercises intense control over its own history and does what it can to impose its own interpretation of China’s modern history on its own long-suffering citizens and the rest of us. Frank Dikötter has been fighting back against this ‘Orwellian’ control for decades.

Dikötter has just written and published the fifth in his series on the impact of communism on China. It serves as a prequel to the other four volumes and covers a crucial aspect of the subject: the extraordinary brutality of the communist movement, in its quest for power, starting a century ago.

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